What Is a Raster in Graphic Design?

A raster in graphic design is a digital image composed of individual pixels or dots. It is the most common type of digital image and is used in almost all digital camera and scanner images. When looking up close, a raster image appears to be made up of colored squares, but from further away it appears to be a continuous tone image.

Raster images are also known as bitmapped images because they are composed of pixels mapped onto a grid. Each pixel can be assigned a color value, which is then translated into an output device’s display language such as RGB (Red Green Blue) for monitors and CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black) for printers.

Raster images are resolution dependent meaning that their quality decreases when enlarged or zoomed in on. This is because each pixel remains the same size regardless of its distance from the viewer’s eye.

To avoid scaling issues, it is important to save raster images at the highest resolution possible before enlarging them. In addition, since they save color information as opposed to vector graphics which only contain geometric information, file sizes tend to be larger than vector graphics.

Due to their vast range of colors that can be used and their ability to create realistic textures and gradients, rasters are often used for photographs or complex illustrations that require subtle changes in color or tone. However, because they are resolution dependent and can become distorted when enlarged too much, they should not be used for objects with sharp edges such as logos or icons which must remain crisp at any size.

Rasters have many advantages over vector graphics including better color control and more flexibility when blending colors together with gradients or textures in Photoshop or other image editing software programs. They are also easier for non-designers to work with since there is no need to learn how to draw objects with geometric shapes in order to achieve a desired effect; any user can import an existing photo or illustration into an image editor and adjust it quickly with basic tools such as cropping, resizing, and adjusting brightness/contrast levels without needing special training or knowledge of vector graphics editors like Adobe Illustrator.

Conclusion: A raster in graphic design is a digital image composed of individual pixels arranged on a grid.

It is the most common type of digital image used in cameras and scanners today due to its ability to capture realistic textures and gradients accurately while maintaining high quality resolution when viewed from further away. Rasters should not be used for objects with sharp edges since they become distorted when enlarged too much but they have many advantages over vector graphics such as better color control and more flexibility when blending colors together with gradients or textures using photo editing software programs.